


All You Have Is Your Fire

by monicawoe



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Animal Death, Dean Winchester thinks Sam Winchester is dead, Disturbing Themes, Fire Magic, Gen, Horror, John Winchester Dies, POV Dean Winchester, Pyromania, Resurrection, Sam Winchester's Demonic Powers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-30
Updated: 2020-03-30
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:09:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23401270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/monicawoe/pseuds/monicawoe
Summary: Dean has known fire all his life. Sometimes it sounds like his brother.
Relationships: Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester
Comments: 16
Kudos: 65
Collections: Supernatural Spring Fling 2020





	All You Have Is Your Fire

**Author's Note:**

  * For [quickreaver](https://archiveofourown.org/users/quickreaver/gifts).



> written for quickreaver for the 2020 SPN Spring Fling for the prompt "firestarter"

Dean has known fire all his life.

When he was four years old, he lost his mother and brother to fire all in the same night. The fire had burned so hot, they never even found his baby brother’s body.

Dad changed, after, convinced that their deaths hadn’t been an accident, that they’d been orchestrated by demons. He raised Dean to fight evil—all kinds of evil. So much of it could be killed with fire.

For the first few years, Dean wasn’t allowed to actually help with the hunts. He was too young. But he’d help Dad prep the weapons, filling shells with rock-salt, and then wait for Dad to come home, help him clean his bloodied clothes. Sometimes they were too torn, too soaked with venom and ichor and other things that would never come out, so he’d have Dean help him build a fire and burn them.

By the time he was nine years old, Dad let him build fires all on his own. Dean liked building fires. He liked the smell of them, he liked finding just the right kindling, and how a small burning strip of paper could grow big enough to light up a whole yard. It felt warm and familiar.

And he liked keeping the fire going. Feeding the fire. Dad let him tend it for hours, falling asleep on a chair nearby.

“You must be real hungry,” Dean told the fire, whispered quietly like he was sharing a secret, as he added more wood, “because you sure eat a lot.”

The flames flickered, and for a moment the fire laughed, carefree and bubbly like a five year old.

#

They moved a lot, but Dad sent him to school whenever they stayed in place long enough for him to enroll. Dean didn’t see the point of school. But sometimes it was nice to see other kids, even when all he could do was lie to them.

But schools always got boring after the first few days of newness had worn off. Dean decided not to go to science class one Thursday afternoon, and went down to the basement instead. He found storage rooms filled with teacher and janitorial supplies, books, magazines, old school newsletters, a few bins of gym equipment, and a dead mouse in the middle of the hallway with its paws curled in.

Dean crouched down to get a better look at it and the smell of its decay hit him full in the nostrils. He eyed the fire alarm mounted to the wall, moved a chair so he could reach it and took out the alarm's battery. From the supply room he grabbed a few sheets of newsletter, then he pulled out the lighter in his pocket and built a small nest of scraps around the mouse and set it aflame.

The fur stank as it shriveled and blackened, tickling Dean’s nose, and he watched as the fire worked its way into the mouse's skin and muscle, licking it clean down to the bone. The big plume of smoke was surprising compared to the tiny mouse.

 _“Thank you,”_ the fire whispered and Dean smiled, lying down next to the fire to watch all its flickers until it finally died out.

He was still lying there in the dark when the janitor found him and asked, “Hey kid, what're you doing?”

Dean stood up and looked him in the eyes. “There was a dead mouse.”

The janitor nodded at him, and Dean thought for a moment he could see the echo of the yellow flame in his eyes. “I won’t tell anyone if you don’t,” he said, and Dean nodded back, though he wasn’t entirely sure if the janitor meant the fire, or the mouse, or something else entirely.

He never did tell Dad, and neither did anyone else.

#

“Just keep feeding the fire,” Dad told him. “It’ll be here soon.”

They were on a hunt in a forest, trying to lure out a faun, a forest monster that only came out at night and liked to feed on unsuspecting campers. Dean was twelve, old enough to help, good with a gun but not great. This kind of monster couldn’t be killed with bullets, only a steel blade. So his job was to keep the fire lit, while Dad waited in the trees for it to show.

He heard it, rustling behind him, its hooves quietly crushing the dried leaves. But he didn’t turn around. Knew better than to tip it off.

It didn’t waste much time, lunging out with a splintering of branches. Dad’s machete whistled through the air, and the faun’s horned head landed at Dean’s feet.

 _“Feed the fire_ ,” said a voice that wasn’t Dad’s. The fire’s voice.

So Dean picked up the faun’s head, looked into its glazed-over goatish eyes for a moment before throwing it into the flames. The crackling of its flesh sounded like applause. 

#

Fire became more than Dean’s favorite weapon, it became his best friend. Because sometimes it spoke to him, like it knew him. When he was thirteen, he helped Dad kill a ghoul in Missouri, and it was the first time Dad let him burn the whole corpse by himself. Dean doused it with gasoline, struck a match and gave thanks to the fire, offering up the mangled body in sacrifice.

The monster’s flesh bubbled and broiled and he could feel the fire smiling warmly at him, grateful for his gift.

The fire spoke Dean’s name then, and its voice seeped into his skin, bright and protective and powerful. Dean promised more offerings.

#

And he made _so many_ more.

The older he got, the better he got at hunting, until, by the time he’d reached his mid-twenties he was easily better than Dad. He took the offensive lead on hunts sometimes, ones where speed mattered. They were doing fine, until Dad got a whiff of the demon that had killed Mom and baby Sam.

They drove for two straight nights to get to where the omens were, only to find the demon was long gone, but it had left them a parting gift: a dozen corpses in an old abandoned barn. Human corpses, arranged in a circle, all of them with fingers pointing outwards, like a flower, or maybe a pinwheel.

Dad stormed out of the barn, furious that they’d been too slow.

Dean stayed behind to burn the bodies and told the fire what had happened.

The fire stroked his cheek and shoulders and said, _“The demon’s toying with Dad, hiding from him. But it can’t hide from me.”_ The flames grew hotter, painfully so, until Dean had to back away, hands held up to shield his eyes from the sun-bright radiance.

 _“There,”_ the fire said and extinguished all at once, a blast of icy cold left in its wake.

In the center of the scorched circle were a set of numbers. Coordinates.

#

They found the demon right where the fire said. In a church in Pontiac.

Dad was prepared. He’d found a gun, a magic gun that could kill anything, even demons. And when they found the yellow-eyed demon Dad had the gun drawn and aimed before Dean could even catch his breath.

But the demon just smiled, sickly yellow eyes glowing in the dim light of the church. He cocked his head and sent Dean hurtling through the air, pinning him against the wooden cross. “Shoot me and your boy dies. I promise you I can kill faster than a bullet.”

“Don’t,” Dad’s voice wavered but he kept the gun aimed at the demon’s head.

The demon clucked his tongue and chuckled, a grinding rumble of a noise that set Dean’s teeth on edge. Pain shot through his stomach as an invisible knife sliced into him. Blood stained his shirt instantly, seeping into the fabric and dripping down onto the warped aged floor below.

“No! Stop!” Dad shouted.

“Toss me the gun,” the demon said. “And I’ll consider it.”

“Don’t!” Dean pleaded. This was everything they’d been working towards for years. “Take the shot!”

The demon snorted another laugh. “Now that’s dedication. You raised him good, John.”

“Stop,” Dad said, one more time and then he lowered the gun and kicked it across the floor toward the demon.

With a flick of his fingers, the gun flew into the demon’s grip. He looked it over, like he was admiring its make, aimed it at Dad and fired.

#

Dad died in a hospital, with tubes down his throat. Like a feeble man, not a warrior. Dean played the part of the grieving son just long enough to get them to hand over his body.

 _He needs a proper burial,_ Dean thought, and built a pyre. He doused him in lighter fluid like anointing oils and when he threw the match, the flames burned a thousand shades of blue and white and yellow, reaching high up into the night-black sky.

The fire mourned with him, wrapping its strong arms around him, and it whispered his name and dried his tears with its heat.

The pyre burned for hours, until the bones were clean, and then those burned too, laying down another layer of ash on the ground, thick and pale like snow.

And when the fire finally went out, the sun had just started to rise. Dean waited, shivering in the cold of the fire’s absence. But as the sun crested, he heard its voice again, from the charred ruins of the pyre, and when he lifted his eyes, he saw a man there, four years younger than him and as familiar as the flame. His brother stepped off the pyre, feet sinking into the soft ash, and each step he took towards Dean left behind a smoldering footprint.

Dean has known fire all his life, and its name is Sam.


End file.
